Serving the High Plains
Serving the High Plains
Proverbs 11:1 says, “A false balance is abomination to the Lord: but a just weight is his delight.”
The word “abomination” there is a strong term. While it is true that all sin is sin, it is also true that some sins are more strongly denounced. In this case, the Hebrew word that appears in the ancient text signifies a sin that God finds particularly disgusting.
So what is being said here? That God is a big stickler for accuracy in measuring devices?
Not exactly: There is more at stake. The only place you would have found a balance in that day was the marketplace. And, the only use for the balance was to weigh out commodities like gold and silver.
They didn’t have paper money. They paid for everything with physical items that were deemed valuable.
For instance, someone might offer to sell a basket of bread for an ounce of silver. The buyer agrees to the price, and so both the buyer and seller go to the scales, the balances. A standard ounce is placed on one pan, and the buyer must put enough silver on the other to balance the scales.
The balance was about one thing: Money.
If I’m a business man who rigs the balance so that it works falsely in my favor, or if I have weights in my bag that are labeled as one ounce, but are actually more or less than that, I have the ability to manipulate any transaction. I can say I just weighed out an ounce, when I really only weighed out 8/10 of an ounce.
“Abomination” means God finds that sort of move highly offensive.
The connection we need to make in our day is at least twofold. In the first place, faithfulness to God demands integrity in business, even in the details. Secondly, though, this means that we should use real money whose value cannot be easily manipulated by the powerful to the detriment of those who have less and are vulnerable.
This is manifestly not what we have in America. We have what is called fiat money. That means it only has value because a powerful entity (the federal government) says it does. “Fiat” is basically Latin for, “Because I said so.”
The government also has the power, by manipulating inflation through control of the money supply and interest rates, to raise or lower the actual value (the purchasing power) of each dollar. It gets to raise the power of the dollars it uses to pay its own bills, while the dollars you take to the grocery store are worth less. (That’s “worth less,” not worthless, although sometimes that’s a close call.)
As many economists have pointed out, inflation is, in this way, a hidden tax that is paid by the poor. The power of his money has been hijacked.
The takeaway here is simple. No one has the right to do wrong. We should remind our leaders that they don’t get a pass from God to do what he finds disgusting. In the world that our Lord has made, when cheaters win, it’s only a temporary condition.
Gordan Runyan is the pastor of Immanuel Baptist Church in Tucumcari. Contact him at: